Steven P.C. Fernandez, Artistic Director-Playwright of the MSU-IIT Integrated Performing Arts Guild (IPAG) and Professor at the College of Arts and Social Sciences spoke about the influences of Islam in Philippine Theatre before an elite group of Arab Theatre scholars, directors, playwrights, and practitioners.
Fernandez was guest of the UNESCO-ITI Arab Institute of Theatre engaging with the performances and practices of the Emirates, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Jordan, among others. In the forum, he spoke to some of the most distinguished personalities of theatre in the Arab World and ITI Secretary General Tobias Biancone who was in the audience.
The festival was held in the Islamic Center of Sharjah, a modern city neighboring Dubai and one of seven states that make up the United Arab Emirates. Sharjah in recent years has strived to become a world culture capital and has recently hosted the World Book Festival.
Fernandez who has lectured in major art and literary events abroad in recent months was one of only two Asians invited to speak, and one of only three non-Arabs.
In the recent UNESCO-ITI festival in Ho Chi Minh City, acclaimed director Aubrey Mellor formerly of the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Arts and now with La Salle College of the Arts in Singapore introduced Fernandez as “one of Asia’s leading minds.” In this conference, the MSU-IIT represented by the IPAG was nominated and elected to the Bureau’s roster of important universities that includes performance in its curriculum.
Fernandez is scheduled to lecture in the next APB festival in Shanghai and Beijing in May and in a Performance Studies conference also in Shanghai in July before joining the Asia Pacific Writers and Translators conference in Singapore the week after. Contributed News for OC-OPI
Topics : ipag